I'm a huge XCOM fan and from what I read about Chimera Squad, it just seemed like a weird 'not really XCOM' thing. It also reminded me of what I think XCOM2 calls 'arcade mode': a separate internal game that works on completely different mechanics to the main game, almost like a 'quick battle' option but weirdly specific and it departs from the main storyline in incompatible ways which annoys me. Maybe its weirdly linear nature is part of the problem.
- I'm having a great time with the game.
It's like a snackable version of XCOM and is absolutely a spin-off with its own mechanics vs the mainline games of the series.
Base building is gone, characters are pre-set personalities with unique individual upgrade trees (unlike the class trees in the main game), no character deaths (If characters bleed out during a mission you simply have to restart no hobbling forward with half your squad wiped), missions are entirely contained battle encounters with either 1/2/3 rooms per encounter with no moving forward until the objectives in the current room have been achieved, rather than pod initiative the game has an individual character initiative structure.
The meta game revolves around managing city anarchy levels, the economy involves intel for overarching perks, elerium for research. and credits to purchase supplies.
Its very very easy to drop in, play a few missions for 30 minutes, then drop out. Frankly I'm loving the gameplay, but I completely understand how someone who wanted XCOM 3 would be deeply disappointed but its not a numbered entry into the series so not sure what people were thinking...
The game's biggest failing IMO is despite having a great premise (a police squad that has humans and the remnants of the advent races having to make peace working together to police an experimental human/advent city) the game's plot and characters don't really do anything with it. The characters are all Gen Alpha type rounded edges foam padded super considerate mushpiles despite half the squad having tried to actively genocide the otherhalf during the events of XCOM 2 (yeah yeah mind control), and the story is a pretty ho-hum "forces working against unity of the species" boilerplate.
Also, getting railroaded into completing one investigation at a time unnecessarily limits enemy variety over the course of the game.
XCOM2 / XCOM2 WOTC is definitely a worthy addition to the set, I think I've clocked something like 897 hours on it (Steam shows both as a single game all-in-one), IMO play XCOM2 without WOTC then play it with WOTC, and then you probably won't go back to the vanilla version. I wonder if they thought that XCOM2WOTC would be stuffing too much into one game. If I get a hankering for XCOM, then XCOM2WOTC is the somewhat more likely version of the game I'll play (over XCOM2012 EU / EW, or UFO: Enemy Unknown through OpenXCOM and switching off enemy psionics), but I do still play the older games from time to time.
- Still haven't played XCOM 2 because the idea of using my limited gaming time to get deeply invested into potential failed/zombie runs etc doesn't seem appealing to me right now, but I have the complete edition of XCOM2 (including WOTC) and I still haven't played through XCOM with EW activated, so plenty of Xcom left for me to discover.
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